10. Fonts

The
first version of Windows to include a unified system for displaying and
printing text across all Windows applications and printers was Windows
3.0. This was an attempt to catch up to the Macintosh, whose integrated
support for PostScript font and graphics rendering gave it a big lead
over earlier versions of Microsoft Windows. When Microsoft Windows 3.1
was introduced along with a new scalable font technology known as
TrueType, Windows users had font capabilities on a par with the Mac.
With the development of OpenType by Adobe and Microsoft, which
integrates PostScript and TrueType support into a single font format,
publishing and graphics users have never had it so good.

Windows
7 follows in this tradition, using the same TrueType and OpenType font
outline technologies supported natively by Windows XP and Windows 2000.
However, the font previewing and management tools in Windows 7 are
better than those in either Windows XP or Windows Vista.

Fonts 101

The
Fonts folder can be accessed from the Appearance and Personalization
category of the Control Panel and is also available in Large Icons and
Small Icons views. Use the Fonts folder to view fonts, preview fonts,
print font samples, and access special characters.

The word font,
as used in Windows, refers to a typeface. Those people in typesetting
circles believe the term is misused in PC jargon, and you should be
calling, say, Arial a typeface. But, oh well. There goes the language
(again). Fonts are specified by size as well as by name. The size of a
font is measured in points. A point is 1/72 of an inch.

Note
that all fonts except some raster fonts (see the following Tip) are
scalable to any size needed. Technically, the OpenType and TrueType
fonts installed on a Windows system are font outlines: Windows scales
the font outline as needed for display and for printing. Although you
can content yourself with picking a standard font size from a menu in
Microsoft Word, CorelDraw, or Adobe Photoshop, you can enter any size
you want in the Font menu or dialog box for a TrueType or OpenType
font. If you need a 131.76 point font, you’ve got it! And, you can see
it onscreen.

Windows
7 includes about 130 font families, most of which are OpenType fonts.
(A few TrueType fonts are included in that number, as are a small
number of fonts.) A font family might include only a single style, or
several styles (Roman, Italic, Bold, and so on). If you have installed
Microsoft or third-party office suite or graphics packages, you may
have additional fonts installed.

Tip

To
determine whether a font is OpenType or TrueType, open a font family
icon, then double-click one of the typefaces to see a sample. The font
sample dialog box indicates the type of font.

As you can see from Figure 14,
the Fonts folder in Windows 7 is nothing like its predecessors: you now
see a preview of the Roman (standard weight) typeface in a font family,
and you also see fonts designed for languages different from your
currently selected language. These fonts, shown in gray, are
hidden—they will not show up in font menus.

Figure 14. The default Large Icons view of the Fonts folder. Fonts in gray are hidden from view in applications’ Fonts menu.

Figure 15
shows a typical preview of a font family that includes multiple styles.
As you can see, Windows 7 has uncluttered the Fonts folder by grouping
styles together in the main fonts folder and showing you the different
styles only when you select a family.

Figure 15. The Arial fonts family as installed in Windows 7 has five members (Black, Bold, Bold Italic, Italic, and Regular).

Font Types

The two primary categories of fonts are serif and sans-serif designs. Serifs are the little embellishments (often called “feet”) that extend from the main strokes
of the character. Serifs often are added to improve readability. As the
name implies, sans-serif fonts lack these embellishments, making for a
cleaner look. Sans-serif fonts tend to work well for headlines, whereas
serif fonts are traditionally used for body text. Combining one serif
and one sans-serif font in this way will look good together, but two
sans-serif fonts or two serif fonts will clash. Times New Roman is a
serif font, whereas Arial is a sans-serif font.

Tip

Aligning
text in emails can be tricky. Although numbers in most proportionally
spaced fonts are monospaced, each press of the spacebar when a
proportional font is in use moves the cursor only a small increment.
Even if you use tabs to align text, different email clients may
interpret tabs differently or might use a proportional font and replace
tabs with spaces, throwing off alignment. To help align columns of text
in emails, send email in HTML-based (rich-text) format if the receiver
can handle it, or attach a document in a common format, such as
Microsoft Word that contains properly aligned text.

The next major classification of fonts has to do with the spacing between characters. In monospaced fonts such as Courier New, every character occupies the same amount of horizontal line space. For example, l and W get the same amount of linear space.

By contrast, proportionally spaced fonts give differing amounts of line space, depending on the character. A W gets more space than an l or an i. The advantage of using monospaced
fonts is that they allow you to easily align columns of text or numbers
when you’re using a simple word processor such as Notepad or sending
email. You can use the spacebar to align the items in the columns, as
you would on a typewriter.

Two other categories of fonts (after headline and body text) are ornamental and nonalphabetic symbols. Ornamental (sometimes called display)
fonts have limited application. They are often fun in the short term,
or for a one-shot deal such as a poster or a gag. They often attract
attention but are too highly stylized to be suitable for body text, and
they can distract the readers’ attention from your message. Windows 7
doesn’t include ornamental fonts, although it includes a few script
fonts (which mimic handwriting). You should use ornamental fonts
sparingly and only when you want to set a special mood.

Symbol
or pi fonts contain special symbols such as musical notes, map symbols,
or decorations instead of letters, numbers, and punctuation marks. Good
examples are Symbol, Zapf Dingbats, WingDings, and WebDings (the last
two are included in Windows 7).

Font and Font Information Sources

The Microsoft Typography website (www.microsoft.com/typography/default.mspx)
provides a wealth of information about fonts, including tools,
utilities, and links. Click the Font Foundry List link (under
Resources) to find a list of all commercial, freeware, and shareware
type foundries.

Some of my favorite commercial font foundries include

Adobe Systems (www.adobe.com/type/index.html)—Features low-cost font libraries for educators and the Adobe Font Folio collection of more than 2,200 typefaces.

Monotype Imaging (www.fonts.com)—Home of many Windows fonts, including Times New Roman and Arial.

Save money and find some unusual fonts with these low-cost font sources:

The Scriptorium (www.fontcraft.com)—Features a huge variety of historic and specialized fonts

You can also find a lot of low-cost or free fonts online or in CD collections at retail stores.

Font Substitutions

In
a perfect world, everyone working with a particular document would
already have the correct fonts necessary to view and print it just as
the originator intended. Unless you use only the basic fonts that every
version of Windows from 3.1 to the present has included as standard
(Arial, Courier New, and Times New Roman) or embed the fonts you use in
a document (a feature not all applications or
all fonts support), mismatches between installed fonts on the system
used to create the document and on the target system are likely to
happen.

To enable a document created with
missing fonts to display and print in a reasonable facsimile of the
original, font substitution features in applications and printer
drivers are used. For example, in Microsoft Word, to determine whether
font substitutions are taking place, choose Tools, Options,
Compatibility, Font Substitutions. Some applications, such as
CorelDraw, display a warning dialog box and provide the opportunity to
select a substitute font if you open a file that contains fonts not
present on your system.

Another kind of
font substitution pertains only to PostScript printers. Because
PostScript printers have internal fonts, printing is faster using them
than forcing Windows to download a similar font file into the
PostScript rasterizer and then commence printing. For example, the
Windows Arial font and the PostScript Helvetica font are virtually
identical. So, you can tell your PostScript printer driver to use only
the Helvetica font in the printer whenever you print a document
formatted with Arial. Likewise, Times can be substituted for Windows’s
Times New Roman.

A font substitution
table is responsible for setting the relationship of the screen and
printer fonts. In Windows 7, you can find this table on the Device
Settings tab of a printer’s Properties dialog box.

Font Installation and Management

In
Windows 7, font management is performed by right-clicking any empty
space in the Fonts folder and selecting from the View, Sort By, or
Group By options. You can view, sort, and group by the following
default categories: font name, font style, hide/show, designed for
(alphabets), category (text, symbol/pictograph, display),
designer/foundry, embeddability, and font type (OpenType, TrueType,
Raster). You can view all of this information at once in the Details
view, and you can add additional sort options, such as size,
collection, and others. Unfortunately, Windows 7 does not offer the
helpful List Fonts by Similarity feature found in Windows XP.

Tip

Although
Windows 7 font management is (mostly) better than its predecessors, if
you’re serious about using fonts to make your documents and websites
look better, you need better font-management tools than the Fonts
folder. Here are a few possibilities; check with these and other
vendors for versions that are compatible with Windows 7:

Windows
7 uses a new method for installing fonts. To install the font,
right-click the font file in Windows Explorer and select Install. If
prompted, provide the necessary UAC credentials, and the font is
installed into the Fonts folder.

To
remove fonts from your system, open the Fonts folder, right-click the
font family or the individual style, and choose Delete. The fonts are
removed permanently from your system.